Abraham Lincoln’s letter to his son’s teacher

Respected Teacher,

My son will have to learn I know that all men are not just, all men are not true. But teach him also that for every scoundrel there is a hero; that for every selfish politician, there is a dedicated leader.

Teach him that for every enemy there is a friend. It will take time, I know; but teach him, if you can, that a dollar earned is far more valuable than five found. Teach him to learn to lose and also to enjoy winning. Steer him away from envy, if you can.

Teach him the secret of quite laughter. Let him learn early that the bullies are the easiest to tick. Teach him, if you can, the wonder of books.. but also give him quiet time to ponder over the eternal mystery of birds in the sky, bees in the sun, and flowers on a green hill –side. In school teach him it is far more honorable to fail than to cheat.

Teach him to have faith in his own ideas, even if every one tells him they are wrong. Teach him to be gentle with gentle people and tough with the tough. Try to give my son the strength not to follow the crowd when every one is getting on the bandwagon. Teach him to listen to all men but teach him also to filter all he hears on a screen of truth and take only the good that comes through. Teach him, if you can, how to laugh when he is sad. Teach him there is no shame in tears. Teach him to scoff at cynics and to beware of too much sweetness.

Teach him to sell his brawn and brain to the highest bidders; but never to put a price tag on his heart and soul. Teach him to close his ears to a howling mob… and to stand and fight if he thinks he’s right. Treat him gently; but do not cuddle him because only the test of fire makes fine steel. Let him have the courage to be impatient, let him have the patience to be brave. Teach him always to have sublime faith in himself because then he will always have sublime faith in mankind.

This is a big order: but see what you can do. He is such a fine little fellow, my son.

Abraham Lincoln

Advocacy, Inspiration, Politics

September 27, 2011

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Ignorance is the utter lack of self-knowing

By  Krishnamurti’s Teachings

Ignorance exists even though one may have great knowledge, a good education, be sophisticated, have capacity in the exercise of which one achieves fame, notoriety, money.

Ignorance is not dispelled by the accumulation of a great many facts and much information—the computer can do all that better than the human mind. Ignorance is the utter lack of self-knowing.

Most of us are superficial, shallow, have so much sorrow and ignorance as part of our lot. Again, this is not an exaggeration, not an assumption, but an actual fact of our daily existence. We are ignorant of ourselves and therein lies great sorrow. That ignorance breeds every form of superstition, it perpetuates fear, engenders hope and despair and all the inventions and theories of a clever mind.

So ignorance not only breeds sorrow, but brings about great confusion in ourselves.

Talks with American Students, p 171

Advocacy

May 15, 2011

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True symbol of faith in prayer

In a village which had not seen rain in years, crops were failing and people were dying. All the village elders decided to gather at the centre of the village and pray for rain. They asked every person to carry with them one object of faith to help in the prayer. When the crowd gathered, people had various objects in their hands – bible, pictures of God, prayer beads, etc. However one object stood out in the whole crowd – it was an umbrella that a little kid had carried. True symbol of faith in prayer. And it rained

Advocacy, Humor, Inspiration

May 8, 2010

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The Story of the Butterfly

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole. Then it stopped, as if it couldn’t go further.

So the man decided to help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon. The butterfly emerged easily but it had a swollen body and shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch it, expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge and expand enough to support the body, neither happened! In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life
crawling around. It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand: The restricting cocoon and the struggle required by the butterfly to get through the opening was a way of forcing the fluid from the body into the wings so that it would be ready for flight once that was achieved.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our lives. Going through life with no obstacles would cripple us. We will not be as strong as we could have been and we would never fly.

Advocacy, Inspiration

June 13, 2010

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Our own unique flaws

A water bearer in India had two large pots, each hung on each end of a pole, which he carried across his neck. One of the pots had a crack in it, and while the other pot was perfect and always delivered a full portion of water at the end of the long walk from the stream to the master’s house, the cracked pot arrived only half full.

For a full two years this went on daily, with the bearer delivering only one and a half pots full of water in his master’s house. Of course, the perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect to the end for which it was made.  But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do. After two years of what it perceived to be a bitter failure, it spoke to the water bearer one day by the stream.

“I am ashamed of myself, and I want to apologize to you”. “Why?” asked the bearer. “What are you ashamed of?” “I have been able, for these past two years, to deliver only half my load because this crack in my side causes water to leak out all the way back to your master’s house. Because of my flaws, you have to do all of this work, and you don’t get full value from your efforts,” the pot said.

The water bearer felt sorry for the old cracked pot, and in his compassion he said, “As we return to the master’s house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path.”

Indeed, as they went up the hill, the old cracked pot took notice of the sun warming the beautiful wild flowers on the side of the path, and this cheered it some. But at the end of the trail, it still felt bad because it had leaked out half its load, and so again it apologized to the bearer for its failure.

The bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of your path, but not on the other pot’s side? That’s because I have always known about your flaw, and I took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back from the stream, you’ve watered them.

For two years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate my master’s table. Without you being just the way you are, he would not have this beauty to grace his house.”Each of us has our own unique flaws. We are all cracked pots. But it is the cracks and flaws we each have that make our lives together so very interesting and rewarding.

Tap the cracks in those around you to make flowers. You’ve just got to take each person for what they are, and look for the good in them. There is a lot of good out there. There is a lot of good in all of us! Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape. Remember to give to and appreciate all the different people in your life (even if they forget your name at first) and they will reciprocate, come to appreciate and like you.

Advocacy, Humor, Inspiration

June 21, 2010

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Crafting one’s soul

The eighteenth-century German philosopher Johann Herder taught that each person has an original and unique manner of being human. The task is to develop it.  According to Nietzsche, a person is known by his or her “style,” that is, by the unique pattern that gives unity and distinctiveness to a person’s activities.  Style articulates the uniqueness of the self.  Rather than fitting one’s life into the demands of external conformity, rather than living one’s life as an imitation of the life of another, one should look to find the authentic self within.

One should labor to develop one’s own unique style in crafting one’s soul. An individual who denies his or her own individuality articulates life with a voice other than that which is uniquely his or her own.  A person who suppresses his or her own self is in danger of missing the point of his or her own existence, of surrendering what being human means.

Rabbi Byron L. Sherwin, in Crafting the Soul

Advocacy, Humor, Inspiration

June 24, 2010

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People, Power, and Public Spaces

The influence of the new digital commons in democratic uprisings from Tunisia to Egypt to Bahrain has been chronicled at length in news reports from the Middle East, with Facebook, Twitter and other social media winning praise as dictator-busters.

But the importance of a much older form of commons in these revolts has earned scant attention—the public spaces where citizens rally to voice their discontent, show their power and ultimately articulate a new vision for their homelands. To celebrate their victory over the Mubarak regime, for example, protesters in Cairo jubilantly returned to Tahrir Square, where the revolution was born, to pick up trash.

It’s the same story all over the Middle East. In Libya’s capital city of Tripoli, people express their aspirations and face bloody reprisals in Tripoli’s Green Square and Martyr’s Square. In Bahrain, they boldly march in Pearl Square in the capital city of Manama. In Yemen, protests have taken place in public spaces near the university in Sanaa, which students renamed Tahrir Square. Kept out of the central Revolution Square in Tehran by the repressive government, Iranian dissidents gather in Valiasr Square and Vanak Sqaure.

Last week in Tunisia, the name of the main square in Tunis was changed to honor Mohammad Bouazizi, an unlicensed street vendor whose suicide in December in response to government harassment sparked the revolution that toppled the regime of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.

The course of recent history was rewritten by events happening in Prague’s Wenceslas Square as dissidents ousted an oppressive regime in December 1989. Those protests were inspired in part by events in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that seized the world’s imagination earlier that year when democracy activists unsuccessfully challenged the power of China’s dictatorship.

This all shows that the exercise of democracy depends upon having a literal commons where people can gather as citizens—a square, Main Street, park, or other public space that is open to all.

An alarming trend in most cities in the world, is the privatization of our public realm. As corporate-run shopping malls replaced downtowns and main streets as the center of action, we lost some of our public voice. You can’t organize a rally, hand out flyers, or circulate a petition in a shopping mall without the permission of the management, which will almost certainly say no because they don’t want to distract shoppers’ attention from the merchandise. That’s why you see few benches or other gathering spots inside malls. The result is that our ability to even discuss the issues of the day (or any other subject) with our fellow citizens is limited.

Of course, public spaces enrich our lives in many ways beyond protests. Local commons become the sites of celebrations, festivals, art events, memorial services, and other expressions of community.

With no place to voice our views as citizens, do we become more passive about what happens to our country and our future?

I’ve often wondered if this lack of a central commons in Minneapolis and most other American communities somehow inhibits our civic expression. With no place to voice our views as citizens, do we become more passive about what happens to our country and our future? I don’t know the answer, but I imagine Hosni Mubarak wishes he had built a shopping mall in Tahrir Square.

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Adopted from Jay Walljasper article (People, Power, and Public Spaces) on for YES! Magazine; Jay is a contributing editor of National Geographic Traveler, Senior Fellow at Project for Public Spaces, and co-editor of OnTheCommons.org. Editor of Utne Reader magazine for 15 years, he is the author of All That We Share: A Field Guide to the Commons and The Great Neighborhood Book.

Advocacy, Inspiration

March 5, 2011

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